Sometimes when I tell people I am leaving the country I feel a little treacherous. Especially when people reply 'I don't blame you'. It is a great way to get rid of the gas and electric companies trying to get you to change suppliers though.
I am really positive about Canada and Nova Scotia and I think it's a great place and so much looking forward to the move. However, I will still have a great love for this country and many things about it.
In the Country
I love the English countryside. I grew up in Suffolk which is very flat but still pretty rural. OK, in the 1970s and 80s many of the hedgerows were ripped up and large prairie type fields were created to intensify farming techniques, but there were still some pretty little fields and paddocks where I played as a kid. Quite a few of those I remember are now housing estates unfortunately but, when I drive through Suffolk visiting relatives, I still find it a beautiful place. I love the houses too - flint cottages with brick corners are more my thing than the overly twee chocolate box Suffolk pink thatched ones . Village greens and duck ponds and Norman churches all get me feeling soft and sentimental. I hope I do not start sounding like a Betjeman poem or John Major harping on about vicars on bicycles as some of those sentiments are certainly viewed through rose coloured spectacles and others are looking back to a time that never really existed. I am not talking about the fantasy Disney English village I am reminiscing about the English countryside of my childhood.
And Suffolk, lovely as it is, can be seen as a little featureless. There are many other parts of the country which are also beautiful. Take the train up to Edinburgh from Leeds you travel almost on the beach along some of the most beautiful coastline I have ever seen. The train down to London hits some really nice farms and paddocks before you hit the outskirts of London and the wonderful Alexandra Palace. Driving down to Brighton, once you get off the crawling M25 motorway, you drive through some truly stunning scenery.
This Crowded IsleSo why am I moving to Nova Scotia then if I love this country so much? Well Nova Scotia also has some beautiful countryside - some lovely lakes and some stunning coastline. The Apple Orchards of Kings County particularly took my fancy in June. They looked so pretty in blossom and smelt so lovely. The waves crashing in Smugglers Cove, the wide expanse of Bear River, the lovely pebbles on the beach near St. Bernard and the boats in Digby and Mahone Bay all helped win me over to becoming a Nova Scotian.
It was not all a positive choice though. I would love to smallhold in the UK, with the rural broadband, the common currency, work experience, relatives and friends, customs and culture. We just can't afford it though. Wales used to be affordable - its not now. All over the UK, farms and smallholdings are being sold to city folk as their weekend rural retreat. Most places in the UK are commutable to somewhere with well paid jobs and the countryside is of course a great place to bring up kids. Smallholdings have sometimes been bought as 'hobby farms' for wives of stockbrokers, accountants and lawyers who concentrate on bringing in the cash to pay the whopping mortgage while the cottage crafts provide additional housekeeping money rather than a primary income. This is not a criticism - I can not blame people for wanting what I want and being better able to afford it than me. It has however increased property prices to the extent that we cannot afford to gamble and downshift our life the way I would want if we stay in the UK.
I want it all - I want it nowI suppose I should be patient and save for five or ten years or move house every two years, buying cheap and selling high to try to claw my way up the property ladder. Watch those programmes on TV and hope to fleece some young couple into paying over the odds. But sorry - no that is not for me. Too lazy, time is too precious and I would find that far too much stress. I want my good life and I want it now!
I don't want a mortgage to scare the pants off me struggling to make payments every month. This reduces the ability to make choices about your life and I think would add undue stress that I am trying to cut away. I have plenty of ideas to make a little money - allow my entrepreneurial spirit to thrive but I am too risk averse to risk my house on such things (its why I will never be a millionaire)!
£300,000 to £500,000 for a detached house with a couple of acres would bankrupt us in no time. Either that or condemn me to work all the hours I could, plus a longer commute each end. I am not prepared to shorten my life in this way to pay for our dream of country life. This would not be living in a way that was at all self-sufficient or sustainable.
I am sure there will be many Englishnesses I will miss - food, language, accent, TV, Branston pickle - who knows what will get me feeling at a loss for the motherland. Or will it Norman Churches, flint houses, castles, ruined abbeys or mild winters? I am sure there will be things to miss but this land of ours is far too crowded and there is not enough room for me to be who I want to be.
So Nova Scotia for us. A great place by all our experience so far. Lovely people who have emailed us after reading this site. Lovely people we met in June. A place where the surly teenagers look up from their feet and smile and say hello. Great countryside, scary winters and house prices we can afford. I am very much looking forward to being a Nova Scotian and having my good life, my space, my freedom, my minor risk taking and of course a dog (or two)!
